Patch 4.3.2 Will be Cataclysm's Last According to Dave Kosak

Dave Kosak, Blizzard's lead quest designer, gave a solid interview with Videogamer.com late last week. He highlighted 4.3's successes, failures, and also confirmed that there will be no extra content in the wings for Cataclysm--meaning anyone betting on a Ruby Sanctum styled encounter should stop while they're ahead.

In the interview, Kosak also touched on World of Warcraft's recent subscriber losses as well as Blizzard's overall feelings towards Cataclysm as an expansion. Although many have been disappointed with Cataclysm, he was quick to note the sheer level of content it brought to the world and how much of an epic undertaking that truly was for the World of Warcraft development team. Overhauling all those low level quests took massive amounts of time--and were desperately needed, whether players realize it or not.

While Cataclysm may not have been the highlight of WoW's timeline, it was a necessary one to prolong the life of Azeroth.Hit the break for a transcript of the full interview and let us know your thoughts on both the interview and the expansion. Was Cataclysm a good expansion? Should there have been another encounter after Deathwing? And, most importantly, what has been your favorite feature of 4.3?

VideoGamer.com

How has the response been to 4.3 so far?

Dave Kosak: So far I'm really happy with it. One of our big design experiments with this patch was the Raid Finder option and people are really taking to that. They are really having a good time with it. And the other thing I've been really happy with is we've added transmogrification in patch 4.3 and the community has really supported that. There's websites where you can browse all the different types of clothes your character can wear and make a shopping list then go out and explore the content. So I'm really happy with how the community has taken to that. So far great response.

What do you think the most successful aspect is?

DK: Right now? So far for me it seems to be Raid Finder. I know there are a lot of players that really wanted to see that content, and they really wanted to ramp up their character and then have a real challenge of fighting a raid boss but the logistics of getting together with a guild where everyone was available at the same time to raid – not everybody can do that. So Raid Finder opens up a whole lot of content for a whole lot of people and we definitely want to do it with this patch because it's our most epic raid fight we've ever done.Do you think this patch provides enough content to satiate the users in the period between this and Pandaria?

DK: Well, we've announced publicly that we're trying to speed up our cycle between expansions. So we're definitely working hard on that right now and I think that between the three excellent dungeons we have, the new raid, and Raid Finder that should give people something to sink their teeth into for a few months.

Have you seen any users actually re-subscribing to test out the new dungeons?

DK: I can't really talk about subscription numbers, we've definitely seen a lot of activity on the servers, for sure. We've definitely seen a lot of people checking it out.Games like Rift are taking a very workman-like position on churning out new content updates. Do you think you would be interested in coming out with more patch updates more often in a similar vein?

DK: I can tell you with this next expansion we're definitely looking at ways that we can roll out content in a better pace. Obviously we're looking closely at what other games have done in the past and what we're capable of doing in our own teams and trying to multitask and make that happen. Actually we have some pretty cool plans but unfortunately I can't talk about those! I'm excited because it's one of the things we're looking at: how to keep the game really active.

Thrall is a big part of Cataclysm. Do you see him continuing to be a major player in the game?

DK: He's definitely one of the main characters in Cataclysm, and certainly in many ways Cataclysm is his story. It starts with him setting down the hammer of the war chief of the Horde and passing that to Garrosh. We have a little bit of a love story going on there between both the Shattering and the events in the game in patch 4.2 and then ultimately he's a pivotal figure in saving the world here. But there's a lot of characters in World of Warcraft, so I'd like to especially – and this is something we've been talking about with our fans – really look at the Alliance characters. Trying to make sure they have a really big story as well. So definitely Cataclysm is really a story arc for Thrall and his story will continue for sure because there's a lot he's got to deal with now.

Are there any specific Alliance characters you'd like to take a look at?

DK: Certainly I think Varian Wrynn for the Alliance really needs to be the kind of character that players really look up to and see as a major world figure. And I think if you ask players right now, they don't quite see him that way yet. So we have a lot of work to do on that character I think. We just haven't had the opportunity in-game to explore that character the way that we've explored Thrall. You know, it's like Chris Metzen said, Thrall was barely in the game until an event in Burning Crusade where he had a little bit going on. So characters kind of come and go as we shine the spotlight around in different directions I think we definitely want to shine the spotlight on the Alliance in the upcoming expansion.In terms of the Alliance, the Worgen have gotten mounts. Was there any worry that that would look too comical?

DK: Well, our game has giant cow people and gnomes, rarely do we stop and say "Whoa! Too comical!". I think we try and just have feature sets that we think players want and that we enjoy. So there was definitely a demand for a Worgen mount. We have a lot of fun with World of Warcraft, we try not to take it too seriously, because we really want it to be a world that's alive and fun and has a lot of fun to it.Are you planning on bringing in any smaller patches between now and Pandaria?

DK: There's not a plan – 4.3 is definitely the climax of Cataclysm so there's no more Cataclysm content. Traditionally we've had a grace period where we patch the game before the expansion comes out and you get sort of mechanical changes before you get the new expansion content. So we'll have a world event prior to Mists of Pandaria, but that's mostly a part of Mists of Pandaria's launch and it's not really more Cataclysm content.Do you think that will incentivise users to continue subscribing to WoW between now and then?

DK: What we do is we always look at what's best for the game. You know, we're not tracking subscription numbers obsessively, we're just trying to make the best game we can. We've definitely said publicly that we're trying to roll out content at a faster pace, with a better schedule so players have more to do and it's certainly something we're looking at. And we think that's just good for the game, that's not a "Oh no we have to do this to keep subscribers!". It's a better game, it's the game we want to play and should have more frequent updates.Many users sadly unsubscribed to Cataclysm quite quickly. Do you think users will be more satisfied with Pandaria than they were with Cataclysm?

DK: For me Cataclysm, when we talk about the expansion, for me a lot of Cataclysm was the 1-60 re-design which was an epic amount of work. And I think we managed to pull that off in a time frame and we managed to do it and refresh the old world – that was a big part of Cataclysm. We're really happy with how that turned out!

Comments

Comment by royalecheese

on 2012-01-18T15:09:02-06:00

Many users sadly unsubscribed to Cataclysm quite quickly. Do you think users will be more satisfied with Pandaria than they were with Cataclysm?

DK: For me Cataclysm, when we talk about the expansion, for me a lot of Cataclysm was the 1-60 re-design which was an epic amount of work. And I think we managed to pull that off in a time frame and we managed to do it and refresh the old world – that was a big part of Cataclysm. We're really happy with how that turned out!

A truly graceful shuck and jive sidestep of the question Dave.

Comment by Catriona

on 2012-01-18T15:20:36-06:00

I think it's really sad how many people think they hate Varian when all the information they have is from Westfall questing.

On the interview, I am not impressed with Kosak so far, and he'll have to do a lot better to make up for his crappy "OMG HERE IS ME LOL ISNT I FUNNY" Twilight Highlands intro, IMO.

Comment by Akuow

on 2012-01-18T15:22:40-06:00

Cataclysm provided a reason to go back through all the 'old-world' areas and see what happened. The experience was undoubtedly emotionally richer if one had spent a good deal of time on quests in those areas previously, but that just made the reason even more compelling. What with the focus on the endgame, a lot of people didn't bother to go back and look, which makes me feel that they're missing out, but of course everyone plays for different reasons so I can't really say that ^_^

Easy as it was to get used to flying everywhere, look at how much this expansion brought to Azeroth... and if you're in a retrospective mood look back further. This was in some ways like a culmination of some changes over time, reducing mount levels, increasing mount speeds, changing it around from focus on the mount being expensive to the training mattering most. Nerfing leveling as much as was done nevertheless manages, in conjunction with all the quest re-works, to provide a player's character with a smooth story transition between levels and areas; now all that's missing is a few of the observations one could make about the story and the world with the world in its previous state. Overall though, much less disjointed, less tedious, more convenient, more able to be seen and done by people who are really busy but still want to see it. It's very good.

Comment by Darkerdesign

on 2012-01-18T15:33:50-06:00

Good. Wrap it up. Get this terrible expansion gone and get Pandaria out.

This was an abject failure.

Comment by ersktheshammy

on 2012-01-18T15:50:27-06:00

In the immortal words of bolvar fordragon........

Tell the world the lich king is dead...And the world of warcraft died with him!

Nuff said

Comment by Zonxy

on 2012-01-18T16:13:04-06:00

Lots of good points in the interview. Honestly nothing that I didn't expect. Probably for a lot of the newer players they didn't understand the much needed work that was done on 1-60. I feel like this expansion is done. Deathwing came and went and the world is forever changed. Now we have time to explore, rack up some achivements, some tranny gear and just as that comes to an end we'll be rolling pandas!I'm sure some of the newer players to WoW might have been unsatisfied with this expansion. I feel like Cataclysm offered a very much needed refresher to the game. Adding expansions and branching out is fun, but the game has a story line and through time even the "old content" should reflect some change. Tying in a world wide change to an expansion is a massive feat and Blizz pulled it off beautifully. The best thing in this last patch for me was the extra storage! I actually have a functional bank again where I can store stuff that I can grab through Jeeves in the middle of whatever I'm doing instead of an alt bank or in another toons mailbox. For those of us that's been collecting random crap in game for years our banks were FULL and my inventory was actually also holding keepsakes as well just because I couldn't part with them! I feel like for maybe a large sum we could buy twice as much space! So I can store more useless treasures!

Comment by Jasott

on 2012-01-18T16:51:54-06:00

So umm.... when is the whole Horde taking back Theramore thing going to happen, or is that going to be the world event?

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-01-18T17:00:51-06:00

So umm.... when is the whole Horde taking back Theramore thing going to happen, or is that going to be the world event?

We probably won't see it in game, and it will be tied into the new Jaina book. As for when it's going to happen: Soon.

Also, it's Theramore being burned by the Horde, not taken.

Comment by Onitar

on 2012-01-18T17:19:05-06:00

Many users sadly unsubscribed to Cataclysm quite quickly. Do you think users will be more satisfied with Pandaria than they were with Cataclysm?

DK: For me Cataclysm, when we talk about the expansion, for me a lot of Cataclysm was the 1-60 re-design which was an epic amount of work. And I think we managed to pull that off in a time frame and we managed to do it and refresh the old world – that was a big part of Cataclysm. We're really happy with how that turned out!

He didn't answer the question

Comment by Vahlok

on 2012-01-18T17:22:10-06:00

Should have asked if there was any plan to redesign/make new content for 58-68 because old players get tired of BC quickly.

Comment by Darkerdesign

on 2012-01-18T17:22:30-06:00

Many users sadly unsubscribed to Cataclysm quite quickly. Do you think users will be more satisfied with Pandaria than they were with Cataclysm?

DK: For me Cataclysm, when we talk about the expansion, for me a lot of Cataclysm was the 1-60 re-design which was an epic amount of work. And I think we managed to pull that off in a time frame and we managed to do it and refresh the old world – that was a big part of Cataclysm. We're really happy with how that turned out!

A truly graceful shuck and jive sidestep of the question Dave.

I didn't experience a single bit of the "New Old World". I was already full on the server I play on when Failureclysm came out.

Shame they wasted so much of their resources on an idea that was "just plain bad".

Comment by Voranil

on 2012-01-18T17:24:27-06:00

Look on the bright side, at least this guy will probably have no involvement with this new Titan project of blizz's. they got Alex Afrasiabi designing the quests for that. just look at how bad the new quests in cata are compared to when afrasiabi was in charge. if dave is still in charge during pandaria, expect more sub losses probably.

Comment by Lolus

on 2012-01-18T17:29:13-06:00

Most sub loses were caused by the fact that a bad joke like 'Pandaria' is part of WoW. It doesn't matter if (what's left of) the old WoW team can bring quality back because, people who left, already found well known new game(s) to replace WoW and they won't come back

Comment by Voranil

on 2012-01-18T17:29:34-06:00

either wow needs to be killed off or put into a second version like guild wars 2. but given this titan project, it seems blizz is trying to milk wow for as much profit as they can without significant investment. in the meantime, the quarterly reports are out in another 2 weeks. time to see how much of a difference 4.3 has made.

Comment by Darkerdesign

on 2012-01-18T17:34:05-06:00

Most sub loses were caused by the fact that a bad joke like 'Pandaria' is part of WoW. It doesn't matter if (what's left of) the old WoW team can bring quality back because, people who left, already found well known new game(s) to replace WoW and they won't come back

Wut?

So you're saying that "most" of the sub losses that happened during the beginning of Cataclysm were actually due to Pandaria, which wasn't even announced until just a couple of months ago?

Really?

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-01-18T17:51:52-06:00

new Titan project of blizz's.

Since it's meant to have FPS elements in it, don't expect super deep questing in it either......

Comment by moocow

on 2012-01-18T17:55:19-06:00

I think it's really sad how many people think they hate Varian when all the information they have is from Westfall questing.

And the cooking dailies (has his chef order people to steal from his own people), and the giant statue of himself he built outside his castle, and how he fought with Garrosh throughout LK, and the wording of the Heroes Call quests, and probably more things I've missed.

How Blizz seems to think he should be king of all the Alliance races, instead of just the king of the Humans in ALLIANCE with the other races - an equal to the other leaders, who Blizz are ignoring in favor of the brat.

Certainly I think Varian Wrynn for the Alliance really needs to be the kind of character that players really look up to and see as a major world figure.

If you want players to look up to characters, make them worth looking up to! Not necessarily nice, but at least a magnificent bastard or something. Not a sulky, tantrum-throwing narcissist. And don't expect non-Humans to care about the Human leader even if he's decent.

ALL the other leaders are more interesting and deserving of attention than those two %^&*s, who still get more attention than everyone else combined -.-

Comment by Voranil

on 2012-01-18T17:57:15-06:00

Do you think this patch provides enough content to satiate the users in the period between this and Pandaria?

DK: Well, we've announced publicly that we're trying to speed up our cycle between expansions. So we're definitely working hard on that right now and I think that between the three excellent dungeons we have, the new raid, and Raid Finder that should give people something to sink their teeth into for a few months.

so when does pandaria come out? and if it does turn out to be towards the ends of the year, the three dungeons plus the raid finder is not going to have such a lasting appeal, unless they make the raid finder include older raids.

Have you seen any users actually re-subscribing to test out the new dungeons?

DK: I can't really talk about subscription numbers, we've definitely seen a lot of activity on the servers, for sure. We've definitely seen a lot of people checking it out.

doublespeak for 'we've lost more subs'.

Comment by Sweetscot

on 2012-01-18T18:02:54-06:00

Better, yet can we PLEASE have Alleria and Turalyon back as Alliance heroes? I'm sure that would boost Alliance pride a lot...and Varian is not seen as a great leader because he's viewed the same as Garrosh: A guy who would rather solve problems by going "DERP I SWING MY SWORD" rather then use his brain.

:< And no people Tirion can't be an Alliance leader as he's technically the leader of a neutral faction now.

It's not inconcievable that they could wind up just merged with the alliance or leadership handed off to someone else. Did you see the dark irons merging with the ironforge dwarves and the shendralar being welcomed back to teldrassil? I'm not saying it's a likely course of action but it's not anywhere near as outlandish as lore changes of the past.

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-01-18T18:04:51-06:00

Better, yet can we PLEASE have Alleria and Turalyon back as Alliance heroes? I'm sure that would boost Alliance pride a lot...and Varian is not seen as a great leader because he's viewed the same as Garrosh: A guy who would rather solve problems by going "DERP I SWING MY SWORD" rather then use his brain.

:< And no people Tirion can't be an Alliance leader as he's technically the leader of a neutral faction now.

They could come back...but Varian would still lead the Humans of Stormwind, since Turalyon is a native of Lordaeron.